One that I would throw out there is Pat Murphy's The City Not Long After. Partly because it is about the power of art, partly because of the art pieces she discusses could show up at BRC--I'm thinking especially of the mirror garden and the shoes--not that BRC has such a staircase. Also, it was written in San Francisco (and set there) in the 1980s so I think it has sort of a zeitgeist of that time, that place that connects to the Cacophony society and other things that went into the birth of Burning Man.

And I'd throw in Murphy's friend Lisa Goldstein's A Mask for the General and especially her surrealistic Paris inThe Dream Years for simelar reasons.

is Pat Murphy's The City Not Long After. Partly because it is about the power of art, partly because of the art pieces she discusses could show up at BRC--I'm thinking especially of the mirror garden and the shoes--not that BRC has such a staircase

It's funny you should mention this book Blue Bird Poof.The book was inspired by work at a SF science and art museum that's now been around about thirty two years. Two of the artist's, who used to work there, that inspired Pat's imagination- in part at least- (her imagination is really her own after all) are local artists. One is Ned Kahn and the other (actually no longer local-I think he's in Germany these days- and orginally from LA) Chico MacMurtrie.

I think she will be pleased when she finds out her book was referenced here (I know her and intend to mention it to her.)

One of the things that struck me when I went to Burning Man-- finally-- this year, was how many of the artworks there were like 'over the top' (in a really good way) versions of things at this same museum. Burningman like the distilled, refined essence of what that museum had been creating over thirty years. But, for me, Gulliver's Travels--the unadultered version--is the closest book to the event experience I've read.

With this years theme, however, which I love, I wonder if it will be more like the end of Bacon's Novum Organum-- where he basically a created list of "Histories" -expalantions for and of things he thought would be figured outover the next 20 or so years after he wrote the Organum......

Here are a just few:
1. History of heavenly bodies; or astronomical history.

2. History of the configuration of the parts of it towards the Earth, and also its parts; or cosmographical history

3. History of comets

4.History of fiery meteors

5.History of lightnings,thunderbolts, thunders and coruscations.

8. History of rainbows

9.history of blue skies, of twilight. of mock suns, of mock moons, of haloes, of the various colors of the sun and moon; and of every variety of aspect of the heavenly bodies caused by the medium.

22.History of flame and burning hot things

46. History of excretions; spittle, urine, sweat, stools, hair of the head,bodily hair, whitlows, nails and the like.

64. History of drugs

76. History of pleasure and pain in general.

124.History of conjurers and circulators.

127 Miscellanious history of various machines, and motions.

128.Miscellanious history of common experiments which have not developed into an art

Foam--
Cool your connection. I've been a fan of Pat Murphy for about 15 years.

I'm not afraid to mention the Exploratorium by name. I get no money from them, and I'm only encouraging people to go because I think that there's a whole lot of neat intereactive art/science (definately a place where the gap is narrow) that has a lot of playaesque elements. I think that burners especially would get something out of it. I've been fanticizing about a BRC version of the tactile dome for months.

He spreadeth out the heavens like a vault; upon the waters hath he founded it. In the desert hath he made springs of water, and pools upon the tops of the mountains, that the floods might pour down from the high rocks to water the earth.